A family of African refugees took their chronically ill son from a hospital bed in Kenya and flew to Australia. Met by a contract caseworker at Sydney Airport, the family stood clutching a detailed medical file which told how the boy was suffering from sickle-cell anaemia. After being collected from the airport they were taken to a flat in the western Sydney suburb of Fairfield, and left to their own devices.

The problem - the family from Burundi spoke no English, and had never used a phone before.

Some hours later, the boy went into convulsions ….his father tried to use the phone, but could only hear the dial tone, and didn’t know how to make it work. His son died - on the family’s first night in Sydney, while his father roamed the streets desperately seeking help, with no-one able to understand him.

The private company contracted by the immigration department to assist refugees, the Australian Centre for Languages (ACL), said the caseworker was not aware of the child’s medical condition. There has been some criticism of outsourcing such functions, but I don’t believe thats the root of the problem in this case. It seems to have been a case of poor information provided to the contractor, and then a lack of care and thought on the part of the caseworker assigned to the family. Hard to blame this on outsourcing - Immigration’s track record is so poor that you’d have to ask - would a departmental public servant have done any better, and I suspect the answer is no.

According to the family’s lawyer, they were yet to receive an explanation from the department about what happened or why appropriate arrangements were not made for their son’s care.

“This death happened a month ago and they are still waiting for an explanation,” he said.

“They have come to this country, their sick child was left without care, they have lost a child, and they are extremely distressed.”

Neither the department nor the contractor are commenting on specifics of how the case was handled (not at all by the looks of it?) - looks very much like they are not wanting to say anything lest it be taken as some sort of admission of legal liability for the boy’s death.